FUTURE TALENTED Autumn Term 2019 - Issue 4 | Seite 28

Gatsby Benchmarks
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From deprivation
to empowerment:
how one man
changed his story
Kenny Imafidon’s tale of resilience and
positivity shows that where you come from
doesn’t have to dictate where you end up.
We provide a sample of his insights from a
video interview with BecomingX.
hen telling the story of
your life, make sure you’re
holding the pen,” says
social entrepreneur,
political commentator and activist
Kenny Imafidon. “In this life, you
c a n b e w h o eve r yo u wa nt
to be.”
Today, Imafidon is co-founder and
managing director of ClearView
Research, which focuses on research
about young people and millennials.
He has led innovative partnerships
with global brands such as Uber,
Tinder and Deliveroo to encourage
young people to register to vote and
turn out in UK elections and the
EU referendum.
Described by Huffington Post UK
as a “rising star making waves in
UK politics,” he was hailed as one of
the country’s top was black students
in 2014, and named by Impact
Squared as one of 100 young leaders
around the globe making a social
impact to transform our world.
He is clearly successful, influential
– and wise beyond his 26 years. But
this wisdom has been hard won.
“W
28 // ROUTES INTO WORK
“I grew up in a deprived
community. I saw a lot of poverty; just
day-to-day struggling to get by,” he
recalls of his childhood in Peckham,
south-east London. “Hopelessness
was a big thing in my community. You
begin to do things by any means,
whether that be selling drugs or
whatever crime it may be. That
becomes your norm. It’s very much
like a jungle and it’s ‘eat or be eaten’.”
Despite this, Imafidon excelled at
school, and, unlike many of his peers,
As I look back, a
lot of lessons
I learnt in prison, I
still hold with me
today
had ambitions for the future, fuelled
by his mum’s faith in the value of
education. He passed 12 GCSEs and
went on to study philosophy, politics,
economics and history.
Murder charge
His world was “turned upside down”
during his second year of college. Two
days after turning 18, Imafidon was
arrested for the murder of a 17-year-
old athlete, shot dead on an estate in
Peckham. He was charged, along with
four other teenagers, in a ‘joint
enterprise’ case (under which you
can be found guilty by association).
“My life, my hopes, just went down
the drain,” he says, of that moment.
He was locked up for six months,
awaiting trial, and facing the prospect
of a 30-year prison sentence.
The case against him focused on
circumstantial cell-site evidence
(“I was literally there because of
phone calls between me and my
co-defendants”) and ignored his
protestations of innocence and
his impressive school record.
“My whole experience up to that
point was that I very much enjoyed
education,” he says. “I was keen to go
to university to study PPE. The
summer of my first year in college,
I got some work experience at
Cit y Hall, the Houses of
Parilament and at my local
council. I was trying to help
practitioners and politicians to
understand the difficulties that a
lot of people like me, and from my
community, are facing. There are so